Laser-Induced Forward Transfer (LIFT) technology offers an attractive cost/performance ratio for manufacturing and repair of Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs), Integrated Circuits (IC) substrates, Flat Panel Displays (FPDs) and other electronic devices. In the LIFT process the laser photons are used as the triggering driving force to eject a small volume of material from a source film (known as “donor”) toward an acceptor substrate (known as “acceptor” or “receiver”).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,970,196, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a method and apparatus for thin film deposition of materials with a high power pulsed laser. The invention accomplishes the laser direct writing of materials by positioning a receiving substrate opposite a high power pulsed laser source and disposing therebetween an optically transparent source support substrate having coated on one side a thin film of material. The thin film of material can also be a plurality of layers of different types of material. For example, a three layer film can have one layer of gold, a second layer of copper and a third layer of silver.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,440,503, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes laser deposition of elements onto medical devices. In one method, a sacrificial layer does not decompose at high temperature and does not chemically interact with the material of a projectile layer. However, embodiments of the present method have been envisioned in which the sacrificial layer and the projectile layer do interact chemically. For example, in one method, a layer of nickel and a layer of titanium are utilized and the material which is deposited on the work piece is a nickel titanium alloy.